Charles Hodge on Ephesians 3:16

V. 16. This verse contains the apostle’s prayer in behalf of the Ephesians. He prays that God, according to the riches of his glory, would strengthen them with might by his Spirit in the inner man.

The riches of his glory, πλοῦτος τῇς δόξης, means the plenitude of divine perfection. It is not his power to the exclusion of his mercy, nor his mercy to the exclusion of his power, but it is every thing in God that renders him glorious, the proper object of adoration. The apostle prays that God would deal with his people according to that plenitude of grace and power, which constitutes his glory and makes him to his creatures the source of all good.

δυνάμει κραταιωθῆναι. Δυνάμει may be rendered adverbially, "powerfully strengthened," or it may be rendered as to power, indicating the principle which was to be confirmed or strengthened; or, "with power," as expressing the gift to be communicated. They were to receive power communicated through the Holy Spirit. This is to be preferred, because the subject of this invigorating influence is not any one principle, but the whole " inner man."

There are two interpretations of the phrase κραταιωθῆναι εἰς τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον, to be strengthened as to the inner man, the choice between which must depend on the analogy of Scripture. According to one theory of human nature, the higher powers of the soul, the reason, the mind, the spirit, the inner man, retain their integrity since the fall, but in themselves are too weak to gain the victory over the animal or lower principles of our nature, designated as the flesh, or outward man. There is a perpetual struggle, even before regeneration, between the good and evil principles in man, between the reason, or πνεῦμα, and the flesh, or σάρξ. The former being the weaker needs to be strengthened by the divine Spirit. "The inner man," says Meyer, " is the νοῦς, the rational moral Ego, the rational soul of man which harmonizes with the divine will, but needs to be strengthened by the Spirit of God (δυνάμει κραταιωθη̂ναι διὰ τοῦ πνεύματος), in order not to be overcome by the sinful lusts of the σάρξ, whose animating or life principle is the ψυχή, the animal soul." This is the theory of semi-Pelagianism, embodied and developed in the theology of the church of Rome. The opposite, or Augustinian theory, adopted by the Lutheran and Reformed churches, is that of total depravity, i. e. that the whole soul, the higher, as well as lower powers of our nature, are the seat and subject of original sin, and that the natural man is thereby disabled and made opposite to all spiritual good. Consequently the conflict of which the Scriptures speak is not between the higher and lower powers of our nature,—but between nature and what is not nature, between the old and new man. The new principle is something supernatural communicated by the Spirit of God. The classical passages of Scripture relating to this subject, are Rom. 7, 14-25. 1 Cor. 2, 14. 15. Gal. 5, 17-26. In none of these passages does πνεῦμα designate the reason as opposed to the sensual principle, but the Spirit of God as dwelling in the renewed soul and giving it its own character, and therefore also its own name. It is the soul as the subject of divine influence, or as the dwelling place of the Holy Ghost, that is called Spirit. By the "inner man," therefore, in this passage is not to be understood the soul as opposed to the body, or the rational, as distinguished from the sensual principle; but the interior principle of spiritual life, the product of the almighty power of the Spirit of God—as is clearly taught in ch. 1, 19 of this epistle. Even in 2 Cor. 4, 16, where the apostle says: "Though our outward man perish, our inward man is renewed day by day," the meaning is the same. That language could not be used of an unrenewed man. It does not mean simply that though the body was wasted, the mind was constantly refreshed. The inner man that was renewed day by day was the renewed or spiritual man; the soul as the organ and temple of the Spirit of God.